Mughal India, 1526-1707

Mughal India, 1526-1707

The Indian Mughals take their name from the Mongols, since the family traced its ancestry back to both the Mongol leader Genghis Khan and Timur. The dynasty’s founder, Babur, came from Central Asia, but when he was forced to leave his family lands in Farghana, he turned his army to the southeast and invaded India, where he conquered the Delhi Sultanate in 1526. During his grandson Akbar’s long reign (1556-1605), the Mughals established themselves as the Indian subcontinent’s dominant power. The realm was expanded to Bengal in the east, across north and central India, to rich Gujarat in the west. Gujarat’s ports along the Indian Ocean made it possible to carry out profitable trade with the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Europe.

Under Akbar, the Mughal Empire was given a strong central administration, following traditional Islamic models. The ruling elite consisted of Turks, Afghans, Persians, and Indian Hindus. Akbar was a great statesman and commander, and he was open to the different cultures found in his realm. In the newly built capital of Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra, he created his own religion in 1582. It was a synthesis of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, which had been introduced to the court by Jesuit missionaries. Although Akbar himself could not read, he founded a large workshop to produce books and miniatures. Its artists were Persians, Indian Hindus, and Indian Muslims, and their different backgrounds were reflected in their output. The missionaries’ European art proved an important source of inspiration, since naturalism and perspective fit in well with the local pictorial tradition. In other art forms, Mughal art also had a predilection for naturalistic motifs that was unique in Islamic art.

Akbar laid the basis for the Mughal Empire’s administration, which survived for several centuries. He also established a tradition in the field of art that lived on under his son Jahangir (1605-1627) and grandson Shah Jahan (1628-1657). Both were great art-lovers and the latter was an active builder, who commissioned the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife. The Mughal Empire’s period of greatness ended with Aurangzeb, who came to power in 1658. In his later years, he was gripped by religious orthodoxy and devoted himself to building mosques, while pictorial art suffered. The Mughal Empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Aurangzeb. He vanquished the last Shia Muslim sultanates in the Deccan and incorporated several Hindu states that had previously survived as independent realms under Mughal suzerainty.